


Blood is Thicker

by Rellanka



Series: A Year Of Cloudy Skies [64]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25118065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rellanka/pseuds/Rellanka
Summary: Cloud knows he has to be good. If he isn't, Mama might get rid of him like the Professor did.
Relationships: Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Series: A Year Of Cloudy Skies [64]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1697269
Comments: 7
Kudos: 159





	Blood is Thicker

_Be gentle, Cloud._

His mother told him constantly. Be gentle. He was much stronger than the other children. He could truly hurt them if he wasn’t careful. 

She said those words so much, kept repeating them so many times, that it felt like the words sunk into his very bones. 

And so, eventually, Cloud forgot that he was ever strong. 

***

Cloud grimaced as he stared at the taunting boys before him, doing his best to ignore their cruel hecklings and shoves. It didn’t matter how much he _wanted_ to fight back, wanted to show them he wasn’t someone they could push around. 

He knew if he did, Mama would be unspeakably furious with him. 

It was weird, having a Mama now. A person who would _disapprove_ of Cloud hurting someone else. Before he’d only had the Professor, who would send in Soldiers to hurt Cloud until he got angry enough to try to hurt them back. And unlike Mama, he would be pleased when Cloud managed to hurt them. Call it progress and sometimes even give Cloud those pats on the head that were so rare otherwise. 

Cloud used to long for those touches. They’d been the only non-hurtful touches he’d ever had, until Mama. 

Now he got lots of non-hurtful touches, as long as he was a good boy. 

As long as he was good, Mama was happy, and she was even willing to hug him sometimes. 

He’d never had a hug before Mama. Had to get Mama to tell him what it was the first time, in fact. 

But he liked hugs a lot. 

And he wouldn’t get them for a while if he hurt the boys in front of him. 

Deciding that it had gone on for long enough, Cloud turned on his heel and ran away from them. 

Better for them to think he was a coward than for Mama to be upset. 

***

Cloud knew he was different. He knew that all the children that it was really weird that his Mama should be childless one day and have a 6-year-old son the next. 

But after the Professor had finally tired of Cloud’s refusal to kill, after he’d written Cloud off as a failure… 

There’d been nowhere else for Cloud to go other than the place that the Professor found for him. 

And apparently, that place had been a little town called Nibelheim, one where a woman was poor and desperate enough that she was willing to do anything to survive. 

Even accept the rejected little monster that one of the greatest monsters of all pushed into her arms. 

He knew that Mama didn’t like him, not really. That she was scared of him sometimes. He saw it in the way that she froze when he moved too fast or lifted something too heavy for his small body, and then refused to turn her back on him again for hours. 

But Mama was nice, and good, much more so than the Professor. 

And so Cloud didn’t really mind. 

***

(He did, actually. But he couldn’t do anything to change how Mama felt. The one time he’d tried, reaching out with his cells and his mind the way that the Professor had just started teaching him to do, Mama looked terrified. It wouldn’t have worked, anyway. Mama didn’t have an of Mother Jenova’s cells for him to manipulate her emotions with. 

But it did scare Mama enough that she wouldn’t even go near him for weeks, and Cloud quickly decided to never do it again. Anything that scared Mama that badly was a bad thing, and Cloud was bad if he did it. He didn’t want to be bad. Especially not to Mama, who was the nicest person he’d ever met. 

When he told Mama that during his apology, she just looked at him with tears in her eyes before yanking him into her arms and clutching him tight. 

It was the first time she’d hugged him in over a month.)

***

It didn’t take Cloud long, really, to decide he didn’t want to remember the Professor anymore. The Professor was cold and metal and pain and darkness before too much light. He’d never given Cloud a nice thing, other than those all-to-rare pats. A small cell with a barely padded mat for a bed, and a crowd of emotionless staff that followed Hojo’s orders to the T and didn’t care when Cloud begged them to stop hurting him. 

There was really nothing from that time worth remembering, really. 

And so, eventually, he forgot that he ever knew the Professor. 

***

Eight-year-old Cloud really liked Tifa. She was bright, and happy, and oh-so-normal, unlike him. Cloud couldn’t really remember why he was different from the other kids, or why he couldn’t get along with them. They taunted him, sometimes, about how he hadn’t been born there, how he was an outsider that didn’t belong. But it made no sense. Mama had always lived in Nibelheim, and Cloud, being her son, had always lived with Mama. 

Hadn’t he?

His mind always went odd and static when he tried to remember. 

But his Mama said his lack of memory was normal, so clearly it was, right? 

The way that everyone but Tifa and Mama teased him about it caused Cloud to have doubts. 

All he really knew was that Tifa was the only one other than Mama that wasn’t mean to him. 

She was his best friend in the world

Cloud loved her a lot. 

He was going to be her hero someday. 

***

“Sorry, Strife, it doesn’t matter that you passed the written and physical tests. Someone higher up nixed the idea of you ever being given the Soldier serum. Said it would be a waste of resources. Since that’s basically the most important part of the whole process, officially that means you’ve failed the Soldier test.” 

Cloud’s heart sank as he stared at the instructor before him, unable to move or talk as the man thoroughly destroyed all of his dreams. Cloud had it in him to be a great Soldier, he knew he did! If they would just give him a chance… He could be a hero. Like Sephiroth. 

But from the pitying but resolved look on the man’s face, Cloud knew that he wouldn’t be able to change the results, not even if he begged. 

So, gathering the tattered remnants of his pride back around him, Cloud turned without word, not waiting for dismissal (what more could they do to him at this point?) and made his way back to his dorm. 

Where he collapsed onto his bunk. 

And allowed himself to cry. 

***

Sephiroth was there again. 

Cloud could feel it like a current running through his veins as his very cells began vibrating, like static flashing through his skull in waves. 

Sephiroth was here, and Cloud’s hand went automatically to his sword. 

“Looking for a fight already, dearest puppet?” Sephiroth’s silken voice rang out from all around him. Cloud shook his head and focused. No, it wasn’t all in his head. (Not this time.) The voice had to be originating from somewhere. 

The corner of Cloud’s eye caught the faintest hint of movement of dark leather against the already dark night and he whirled to face his personal demon. 

The look in those cat-green eyes when they met Cloud’s own was intense, even more so than usual. As if Sephiroth had finally found the key that would allow him to _actually_ climb inside Cloud’s being and never climb out again. 

“You don’t even realize how foolish an endeavor that is. How tragic it is for kin to fight against kin.” The man said as he continued to walk closer, causing Cloud to pause temporarily. Sephiroth had referred to Cloud in many ways, and many of them had implied that Cloud was below him. He’d never called Cloud kin before. Never given him that equal of a title. 

“No, you don’t realize because I didn’t. Not until my search for how to destroy this wretched Planet brought me to a truth. One hidden from me for my entire life. A truth that’s been kept from you for just as long. A truth that hid something that **belonged to me** ; mine by right of ties far deeper than either of us ever knew. Do you want to know what it is, Cloud? It affects you as much as it does myself, after all.” Sephiroth purred, his eyes devouring and hungry as they stared into Cloud’s. 

Cloud’s hand clenched tight around his sword as a strong, sudden wave of nervous dread swept over him. “What could you possibly have learned that has anything to do with me at all?” He snapped. 

“Ah, but it has everything to do with you, because it concerns your parentage, Cloud.” Sephiroth continued, even as a part of Cloud desperately wanted him to stop, “You were born **mine**. That Hojo chose to discard you as if you were _nothing_ is a sin he will pay for greatly. I promise you that,” Sephiroth paused to visibly savor his next words. “ _Little brother_.” As he spoke, Sephiroth was walking closer to Cloud, a step with every word. By the end of his speech, only inches separated them. 

Cloud shook his head desperately and took a step back even as his vision began to turn static. His sword had fallen while he listened, his body language growing submissive and yielding as it always threatened to do around Sephiroth, and he raised it now and pointed it threateningly at Sephiroth once more. What he was saying wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true. 

“You’re lying.” He accused flatly, even as some tiny, small part of him whispered that Sephiroth _wasn’t_. 

“No, dear brother, I am the one finally giving you the truth. One day, I shall bring you to my side and we shall be together, finally, as we always should have been. And together we will punish this world dearly for the way it dared to keep us apart. The way it dared to lie to us **both**. For that, I will tear this world _apart_.” Ignoring the sword between them, Sephiroth reached out to run a hand through Cloud’s blond hair. To pat his head. 

The gesture was familiar, in a distant, terrible way. Even if it felt wrong for Sephiroth to be the one doing it. 

“But unfortunately the time is not yet right. Have patience, little brother. And I will give to you all that I’ve promised.” Sephiroth leaned closer, closer, pressing a kiss firmly to Cloud’s lips. 

This gesture was completely new. 

Sephiroth leaned back and stared into Cloud’s eyes as Cloud stood there, frozen and unable to move for all the thoughts racing frantically around his head, all the conflicting memories trying to swim their way to the forefront of his mind. 

“And I shall ensure that nothing shall **ever** be able to separate us again.” Sephiroth finished as Cloud shivered at the certainty of it. 

And then Sephiroth was gone. 

And Cloud hated, with every rational part of him, the part of him that hoped his brother would come back soon.

**Author's Note:**

> So basically, this one comes from a twist in the universe where Hojo and Lucrecia had a second child a few years after Sephiroth, and that child is Cloud. After Hojo discards Cloud in Nibelheim, things go on basically the same as canon up to this point. What happens from here is anyone's guess.


End file.
